The Outsider at Milan Design Week, Pt. 3

The movie at Baccarat was a Vulcan Orgy of Nightmarish Proportions.

Welcome, welcome to my adventure attending Milan Design Week aka Salone del Mobile. You can catch up with previous installments here, here, and here.

Day 3

In the morning, a group of us headed out to Fondazione Prada. It was an optional activity, but I figured it would be good to spend some of my time in Milan doing something I might otherwise do as a normal tourist. Architecturally, the Prada Foundation is an impressive complex, and I’m glad to have experienced it. But the art and exhibitions within? Look, I know nothing about art. But I couldn’t hide my confusion. Drones? An enormous room filled with clay sculptures that I felt could have been a high school art fair? Vintage cars skewered by metal rods? Sorry!

Perhaps I’m not sophisticated enough to understand the art of the Prada Foundation.

We grabbed a quick snack at the adjacent Wes Anderson-designed Bar Luce. Very cute.

Lunch was at LùBar, a greenhouse-like eatery beloved by Barnaba Fornasetti aka son of the OG Fornasetti. I could drink approx. two hundred of the Sud cocktail, a refreshing concoctions of basil, gin, and limoncello.

After lunch, I walked over to Arket (a subsidiary of H&M that honestly NEEDS to come to the States).

But let us back up for a moment. The day before, I had gone to the preview of Laila Gohar’s fruit carousel which was created to promote her fashion collab with Arket. Guests at the preview walked away with a tote, which contained a print and a certificate that could be claimed at the Arket store for a gift from the collection.

And so that Tuesday afternoon, I waltzed into Arket to redeem my gift. Turns out said “gift” was…a tote and a print. Ahem. I walked away from the register awkwardly before turning around and returning it. To be completely honest, I had already trashed the tote and the print from the day before.

FYI, Arket’s homewares collection is pretty limited (at least from what I saw in-store), but I did love these mesh bowls.

Metal mesh bowls at Arket.

The evening was occupied by the Kelly Wearstler x H&M Home “dînatoire.” What is a dînatoire, you ask? It’s basically a more substantial cocktail party, which T magazine calls “all the rage.” It felt very chic and fancy. I wore a dress so short, I had to wear bike shorts underneath. (Mom took some fashion risks!) It was fun to once again be at Palazzo Acerbi and to experience it at night. We ran into friend of the letter, Monsieur David Michon aka FOR SCALE whom we affectionately refer to as Davide over texts.

The evening finished with a late-night dinner at Dal Bolognese, where I had the tagliatelle with bolognese; it was one of the best things I ate on the trip.

Day 4

Preface to day 4: I’m not trying to sound ungracious but this was the day things got weird…

It was time to check out of the STRAF Hotel. I booked myself an Airbnb for the last night in Porta Venezia and was feeling exceptionally unenthused about it after the male host kept asking me if I was traveling alone. Read the room! Don’t keep asking that question to a woman! (Luckily, the Airbnb was totally fine.)

My first stop of the morning was Casa Milana, a private home that doubles as a showroom and creative space. The occasion was a presentation for Beni Rugs — a brand I adore — but I found myself more captivated by the setting itself. Casa Milana embodies that distinctly European restraint: a reverence for original, historical bones paired with an almost studied refusal to over-decorate. Details that might tip into cliché elsewhere — a set of hand-shaped knobs, say — land here with quiet conviction, as if they’ve always belonged.

Snaps from Casa Milana including the coffee table I now NEED.

The standout, for me, was a lava stone coffee table I’m fairly certain was designed by Mario Milana, the home’s owner and founder.

I then had a reservation for Baccarat’s exhibition, titled Crystal Crypt, an installation created by artist Emmanuelle Luciani. Despite the reservation, I spent about 45 minutes in line. Visitors stepped into a room covered floor-to-wall in purple carpet, and were then subjected to a 12-minute movie I can best describe as Vulcan Orgy of Nightmarish Proportions in a Glass Factory.

Stills from Baccarat’s frightening Crystal Crypt movie.

In multiple scenes — set to a soundtrack of spoken word over intense electronic dance music — muscled, sweaty, shirtless men wield spears that feel ripped straight from a Klingon armory. Are they about to fight to the death? Fuck? Or are they just about to forge a set of crystal champagne flutes?

The glassware was nice though.

Afterwards, your consolation prize is a cup of mostly-melted raspberry sorbet.

I was hoping to check out the Aesop installation, but the line was worse than Disneyland’s most popular attraction on Spring Break. No.

Then I thought I’d go see this pink maze thing. The line was also absurd. Worse than Courage Bagels at 11 am on a Sunday. No, grazie.

What didn’t have a line was Patricia Urquiola’s collab with German bathware company Duravit. In fact, the collection, titled Balcoon, received almost zero attention from the design press, but I found it to be yet another fun example of Urquiola’s seemingly endless creativity. Sinks, bidets, toilets, stacked in totems — all taking sculptural forms and interesting colors.

Courtesy Duravit.

For dinner, I met up with fellow “design Substack” pal Kelsey Rose of Absolument. We’d never met in person before (Kelsey lives in France, ooh la la) but it felt like chatting with an old friend. We had a fascinating conversation over meatballs (v. yum) at Osteria Alla Concorrenza about Kelsey’s work as archivist of the Eames Office.

Hi, Kelsey!

Kelsey then accompanied me to the famed Bar Basso, host to Salone’s late-night design crowd. As someone said during the week, “All roads lead to Bar Basso.” We arrived at a reasonable 7:30 pm but it was pure chaos! We waited and waited to get the attention of a bartender. An equally annoyed but pushy Italian lady took us under her wing and got us served. There is truly only standing room outside and it is dominated by a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Reader, this elder millennial is dismayed to report that she found Bar Basso to be downright displeasing.

Then it was back to the Airbnb to pack up for my flight back home in the morning.

Overall, I loved my time at Milan Design Week. Aside from some of the weirdness and the lines, it was really quite something to see an entire village come together to celebrate design. My first two days, I was surrounded by Americans at press previews. But as the festival began opening up to the public, I heard more and more Italian spoken in the lines that crawled through the Brera Design District. I saw groups of Italian teenagers exiting events, their shoulders heavy with multiples of free totes filled with (most probably) prints and small gifts. I thought, “Wow, what cool kids!”

Until I began to wonder if maybe they were just in it to resell all the Gucci sodas. Nahhhh.

Gucci sodas that ended up for resale on Vinted.

If I had to do it all over — and I truly, truly hope I get to next year! — I probably would have consulted with my pals at The Design Release to plot a more aggressive itinerary. I also would have stayed one more day to attend the actual trade show, which most people don’t go to, but seems like a real missed opportunity to me! First-timer lessons learned!